Self-Replicating RNA

Well, science has just landed another devastating blow to those who endorse intelligent design because researchers at the Scripps Research Institute have recently been able to demonstrate how RNA can reproduce itself by creating strands of RNA that can replicate themselves without any proteins or DNA. Here is the story from Science Daily:


How Did Life Begin? RNA That Replicates Itself Indefinitely Developed For First Time

ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2009)


Now, a pair of Scripps Research Institute scientists has taken a significant step toward answering that question. The scientists have synthesized for the first time RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely.

The work was recently published in the journal Science.

In the modern world, DNA carries the genetic sequence for advanced organisms, while RNA is dependent on DNA for performing its roles such as building proteins. But one prominent theory about the origins of life, called the RNA World model, postulates that because RNA can function as both a gene and an enzyme, RNA might have come before DNA and protein and acted as the ancestral molecule of life. However, the process of copying a genetic molecule, which is considered a basic qualification for life, appears to be exceedingly complex, involving many proteins and other cellular components.

For years, researchers have wondered whether there might be some simpler way to copy RNA, brought about by the RNA itself. Some tentative steps along this road had previously been taken by the Joyce lab and others, but no one could demonstrate that RNA replication could be self-propagating, that is, result in new copies of RNA that also could copy themselves.

In Vitro Evolution:

A few years after Tracey Lincoln arrived at Scripps Research from Jamaica to pursue her Ph.D., she began exploring the RNA-only replication concept along with her advisor, Professor Gerald Joyce, M.D., Ph.D., who is also Dean of the Faculty at Scripps Research. Their work began with a method of forced adaptation known as in vitro evolution. The goal was to take one of the RNA enzymes already developed in the lab that could perform the basic chemistry of replication, and improve it to the point that it could drive efficient, perpetual self-replication.

Lincoln synthesized in the laboratory a large population of variants of the RNA enzyme that would be challenged to do the job, and carried out a test-tube evolution procedure to obtain those variants that were most adept at joining together pieces of RNA.

Ultimately, this process enabled the team to isolate an evolved version of the original enzyme that is a very efficient replicator, something that many research groups, including Joyce's, had struggled for years to obtain. The improved enzyme fulfilled the primary goal of being able to undergo perpetual replication. "It kind of blew me away," says Lincoln.

Immortalizing Molecular Information:

The replicating system actually involves two enzymes, each composed of two subunits and each functioning as a catalyst that assembles the other. The replication process is cyclic, in that the first enzyme binds the two subunits that comprise the second enzyme and joins them to make a new copy of the second enzyme; while the second enzyme similarly binds and joins the two subunits that comprise the first enzyme. In this way the two enzymes assemble each other — what is termed cross-replication. To make the process proceed indefinitely requires only a small starting amount of the two enzymes and a steady supply of the subunits.

"This is the only case outside biology where molecular information has been immortalized," says Joyce.

Not content to stop there, the researchers generated a variety of enzyme pairs with similar capabilities. They mixed 12 different cross-replicating pairs, together with all of their constituent subunits, and allowed them to compete in a molecular test of survival of the fittest. Most of the time the replicating enzymes would breed true, but on occasion an enzyme would make a mistake by binding one of the subunits from one of the other replicating enzymes. When such "mutations" occurred, the resulting recombinant enzymes also were capable of sustained replication, with the most fit replicators growing in number to dominate the mixture. "To me that's actually the biggest result," says Joyce.

The research shows that the system can sustain molecular information, a form of heritability, and give rise to variations of itself in a way akin to Darwinian evolution. So, says Lincoln, "What we have is non-living, but we've been able to show that it has some life-like properties, and that was extremely interesting."

Knocking on the Door of Life:

The group is pursuing potential applications of their discovery in the field of molecular diagnostics, but that work is tied to a research paper currently in review, so the researchers can't yet discuss it.

But the main value of the work, according to Joyce, is at the basic research level. "What we've found could be relevant to how life begins, at that key moment when Darwinian evolution starts." He is quick to point out that, while the self-replicating RNA enzyme systems share certain characteristics of life, they are not themselves a form of life.

The historical origin of life can never be recreated precisely, so without a reliable time machine, one must instead address the related question of whether life could ever be created in a laboratory. This could, of course, shed light on what the beginning of life might have looked like, at least in outline. "We're not trying to play back the tape," says Lincoln of their work, "but it might tell us how you go about starting the process of understanding the emergence of life in the lab."

Joyce says that only when a system is developed in the lab that has the capability of evolving novel functions on its own can it be properly called life. "We're knocking on that door," he says, "But of course we haven't achieved that."

The subunits in the enzymes the team constructed each contain many nucleotides, so they are relatively complex and not something that would have been found floating in the primordial ooze. But, while the building blocks likely would have been simpler, the work does finally show that a simpler form of RNA-based life is at least possible, which should drive further research to explore the RNA World theory of life's origins.



Journal reference:

Lincoln et al. Self-Sustained Replication of an RNA Enzyme. Science, Jan 8, 2009; DOI: 10.1126/science.1167856

Self-Replicating RNA

Will the State Become the New Religion?

I've been reading Phil Zuckerman's newest book Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment and I'm into the fourth chapter and it's been very interesting so far.

The perspectives of most of these people Zuckerman interviews is very interesting. One very shocking story from a man interviewed was when him and a friend were out drinking. The friend asked the man if he could confess something and what something might that have been? He believed in god! How strange it is to read about a place where you feel you must apologize for being a believer! It's the complete opposite here in the states.

Another subject that was discussed got me thinking. Zuckerman asked some of his interviewees why there is such a lack of belief and several mentioned that it could be due to the fact that they don't have much to worry about because Denmark is a welfare state. Many things are taken care of because of taxes with medical care, hospices, good economy, etc.

This is very interesting because Zuckerman, after these interviews, wondered if human nature is truly "hardwired" for belief if so many people in these European countries have no worries about death and no belief in god.

I think there might still be some kind of "hardwiring" affecting belief, it's just that as with many things in life, one thing replaces another, and oftentimes serves the same purpose. I've written about this before, when I spoke about addictions and religion. Maybe because of the welfare state these people live in, many things are taken care of and many worries other countries have are nonexistent. The state becomes the substitute for religion. Instead of religion comforting people, the state does by being involved in many facets of their lives.

While I greatly admire the people and the secularization, the state and the taxes people pay for the services I don't care for. I still feel anarchism's principals are the most ethical.

After reading about the "nanny state" that america is becoming I started to wonder if the U.S. could become something like Denmark where peoples' fears are alleviated by the state, and because of the lessening of peoples' fears religion fades away.

Does Europe give a glimpse of a possible future in america? Could it be possible that atheists and other secularists will get what they want? An end to religious belief? But a downside would possibly be a more intrusive government and the kind of state that controls everything, as I explained in the older post Nannyism Running Rampant (linked to above).

I'm not sure what kind of government Denmark has but government is government. They all make use of tyranny and survive with taxes. Though, at least the citizens have those many services available, though it is done with stolen money, and the punishments are less severe making use of rehabilitation as I've talked about in my writings, but they still make use of prisons, though their sentencing guidelines are very soft compared to the U.S. While Zuckerman was conducting an interview with a prosecutor he was told that for a rape "without any severe violence" a person would receive one and a half years, while a rape in some parts of the U.S. would be 11 years, but often only serve about 5 and a half (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_and_punishment).

It does seem as if secularism and non belief are beginning to overtake religious belief , but I think it will be quite some time before (if ever) we get to the level of many of the European countries.

Only time will tell what the future will hold, but I only hope that people will use reason and see that religion and government are not needed in any way, shape or form, and the human race will break free of our history of tribalism, which spawns countless superstitions that do us all no good.

Will the State Become the New Religion?

Atheism is on the Rise

I found this very good article by Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman. Since I've been reading a lot of Zuckerman's stuff lately (I am going to finish the book Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, by Frans de Waal, and then begin reading Phil Zuckerman's newest book Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment) I thought I'd copy and post this so all can see this research. I've also been doing quite a bit of reading about the evolutionary origins of morality and the research which shows how the least religious places on earth (as far as belief in the supernatural/god) fair better (or at the very least equal to) then societies where belief in god is very strong. I've written about some of these topics before, but after refuting some theistic authors' books that mention these topics (David Aikman and David Marshall) I wanted to learn more about these subjects and do more in depth reading than I did when I had written those refutations.

So, here is this interesting article about belief in god around the world:


WHY THE GODS ARE NOT WINNING
by Gregory Paul & Phil Zuckerman


Disbelief now rivals the great faiths in numbers and influence. Never before has religion faced such enormous levels of disbelief, or faced a hazard as powerful as that posed by modernity. How is organized religion going to regain the true, choice-based initiative when only one of them is growing, and it is doing so with reproductive activity rather than by convincing the masses to join in, when no major faith is proving able to grow as they break out of their ancestral lands via mass conversion, and when securely prosperous democracies appear immune to mass devotion? The religious industry simply lacks a reliable stratagem for defeating disbelief in the 21st century.

A myth is gaining ground. The myth seems plausible enough. The proposition is that after God died in the secular 20th century, He is back in a big way as people around the world again find faith. In 2006 Foreign Policy ran two articles that made similar, yet distinctive claims. In the spring Phillip Longman's "The Return of the Patriarchy" contended that secular folk are reproducing themselves, or failing to reproduce themselves, out of existence as the believers swiftly reproduce via a "process similar to survival of the fittest." In the summer FP followed up with "Why God is Winning" by Samuel Shah and Monica Duffy Toft, who pronounced that the Big Three— Christianity, Islam and Hinduism—are back on the global march as secularism fades into irrelevance. In the fall Foreign Affairs joined the chorus when Walter Russell Mead's God's Country? gave the impression that conservative theism continues to rise in a United States jolted back to the spiritual by 9/11. In American Fascists Chris Hedges warns that hard-core Dominionists are accumulating the power to convert the nation into a fundamentalist theocracy.

The actual situation, as is usual in human affairs, much more complex and nuanced, and therefore much more fascinating. Let's start by considering the analytical superficiality that mars the twin articles in Foreign Policy. While Longman proposes that rapid reproduction is the primary agent behind the resurgence of patriarchal faith, Shah and Toft think it is mainly a matter democratic choice in which younger generations reject their parent's secularism. In reality all these claims are well off base. Religion is in serious trouble. The status of faith is especially dire in the west, where the churches face an unprecedented crisis that threatens the existence of organized faith as a viable entity, and there is surprisingly little that can be done to change the circumstances.

Shah and Toft cite the World Christian Encyclopedia as supporting a planetary revival because its shows that "at the beginning of the 21st century, a greater portion of the world's population adhered to [Christianity, Islam and Hinduism] in 2000 than a century earlier." They point to a table in the WCE that shows that the largest Christian and largest nonChristian faiths, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam and Hinduism, rose from half to nearly two thirds of the world in the 1900s. But that it is a peculiar choice of sects. If every Mohammedan and Hindu sect large and small is tallied, shouldn't every Orthodox, Coptic and so on be too? Another look at the WCE table shows that all Christians, Muslims and Hindus combined edging up a much more modest 60 to 66% (but see below correction) since the reign of Queen Victoria.

What scheme of thought did soar in the 20th century? Although Shah and Toft cite the WCE when it appears to aid their thesis, they seem to have missed key passages near the beginning of the work. The evangelical authors of the WCE lament that no Christian "in 1900 expected the massive defections from Christianity that subsequently took place in Western Europe due to secularism…. and in the Americas due to materialism…. The number of nonreligionists…. throughout the 20th century has skyrocketed from 3.2 million in 1900, to 697 million in 1970, and on to 918 million in AD 2000…. Equally startling has been the meteoritic growth of secularism…. Two immense quasi-religious systems have emerged at the expense of the world's religions: agnosticism…. and atheism…. From a miniscule presence in 1900, a mere 0.2% of the globe, these systems…. are today expanding at the extraordinary rate of 8.5 million new converts each year, and are likely to reach one billion adherents soon. A large percentage of their members are the children, grandchildren or the great-great-grandchildren of persons who in their lifetimes were practicing Christians" (italics added). (The WCE probably understates today's nonreligious. They have Christians constituting 68-94% of nations where surveys indicate that a quarter to half or more are not religious, and they may overestimate Chinese Christians by a factor of two. In that case the nonreligious probably soared past the billion mark already, and the three great faiths total 64% at most.)

Far from providing unambiguous evidence of the rise of faith, the devout compliers of the WCE document what they characterize as the spectacular ballooning of secularism by a few hundred-fold! It has no historical match. It dwarfs the widely heralded Mormon climb to 12 million during the same time, even the growth within Protestantism of Pentecostals from nearly nothing to half a billion does not equal it.

Yet Longman, and especially Shah and Toft, left readers with the impression that Christianity, Islam and Hinduism are each regaining the international initiative against secularism. Again we can turn to the WCE, whose results are presented in the pie charts (with the above adjustment, and with the proviso that the stats are inevitably approximations).

Since 1900 Christians have made up about a third of the global population, and are edging downwards. No growth there. Hindus are coasting at a seventh the total, no significant increase there either even though India adds more people each year than any other nation. The WCE predicts no proportional increase for these faiths by 2050. The flourishing revival of two megareligions whether by democracy, edification, or fecundity is therefore a mirage. Having shrunk by a quarter in the 20th century, Buddhism is predicted to shrink almost as much over the next half century. Once rivaling Christianity, paganism – whether it be ancient or modern as per New Ageism and Scientology — has over all contracted by well over half and is expected to continue to dwindle.

One Great Faith has risen from one eighth to one fifth of the globe in a hundred years, and is projected to rise to one quarter by 2050. Islam. But education and the vote have little to do with it. Generally impoverished and poorly educated, most Muslims live in nations where democracy is minimalist or absent. Nor are many infidels converting to Allah. Longman was correct on one point; Islam is growing because Muslims are literally having lots of unprotected sex. The absence of a grand revival of Christ, Allah and Vishnu worship via democratic free choice brings us to a point, as important as it is little appreciated — the chronic inability of religion to recruit new adherents on a consistent, global basis.

It is well documented that Christianity has withered dramatically in Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. The failure of the faith in the west is regularly denounced by Popes and Protestant leaders. Churches are being converted into libraries, laundromats and pubs. Those who disbelieve in deities typically make up large portions of the population, according to some surveys they make up the majority of citizens in Scandinavia, France and Japan. Evolution is accepted by the majority in all secular nations, up to four in five in some.

In his paper "Christianity in Britain, R. I. P." Steve Bruce explains that the recent rise of pagans is not nearly sufficiently to make up for the implosion of the churches, which are in danger of dwindling past the demographic and organizational point of no return. A commission of the Church of England agreed, proposing that little attended Sabbath services be dropped, and concluding that the advent of modern lifestyles "coincides with the demise of Christendom." The church commissioned Making Sense of Generation Y study advised the clergy to "avoid panic." Perhaps that response would be appropriate considering the absence of quantitative evidence of a significant Christian revival in any secularized democracy. God belief is not dead in these nonreligious democracies, but it is on life support. The ardent hopes of C. S. Lewis and John Paul II to reChristianize Europe have abjectly failed.

EuroMuslims may become a theological plurality by outnumbering active Christians in a few decades, but that does not mean much in the context of a shrinking Christian minority. In most western nations Muslims are less than one percent to under three. The only exceptions are the Netherlands at five percent, and France at ten, and the native French have the highest birth rate in western Europe.

The mass loss of popular faith in the Eurocultures is often waved away as an isolated aberration in a world still infatuated with the gods. After all, who cares what the "old Europe" of France and Sweden is up to? This is a big mistake. Such a thing has never been seen before in history. And where it has happened is critical to the future of faith. Aside from constituting proof of principle that religion is dangerously vulnerable to modernity, that secularism and disbelief do best in nations that are the most democratic, educated and prosperous directly falsifies the Shah and Toft thesis that these factors are the allies of religiosity.

But hasn't the loss of faith in old Europe been matched by a great revival in new Europe? In his account of his voyage along the Siberian Lena River, Jeffrey Taylor in River of No Reprieve observed that the locals remain atheistic, and the religious minority seems more nationalistic than devout. This premise is applicable to former KGV officer Putin's embrace of the Russian Orthodox church, which had tight connections with the Czarist secret police. Just a quarter of Russians absolutely believe in God, the portion who say that religion is important in their lives are down in the teens, and irreligion may be continuing to rise in very atheistic eastern Germany and the Czech Republic. Even in Poland, the one eastern bloc nation in which religion played an important role in overturning atheistic communism, just one third consider religion to be very important in their lives, and faith is declining towards the old European norm. It turns out that the "new" Europe is not turning out particularly godly.

The Central Kingdom has never been especially religious, became atheistic under communism, and is striving for world dominance via materialistic consumerism. The finding by the Shanghai university poll that religious Chinese lifted from 100 million in the 1960s to 300 million resulted in headlines along the lines of "Poll Finds Surge of Religion Among Chinese." But the 300 million figure is far below the 600 million religious estimated by the World Christian Encyclopedia, and is less than a third of the adult population. Nor should monotheists be particularly comforted. The survey uncovered 40 million Christians, about half the inflated estimate in the WCE, and just 4% of the adult population. Most religious Chinese are Buddhists and Taoists, or worship the likes of the God of Fortune, the Black Dragon and the Dragon King. By the way, The Economist says women are using religion as a way to battle traditional Chinese patriarchy. If the survey is correct that over two thirds of Chinese are not religious then they may approach a billion in China alone, expanding the global total even further.

Mass devotion remains strong in most of the 2nd and 3rd world, but even there there is theistic concern. South of our border a quarter to over half the population describe religion as only somewhat important in their lives. Rather than becoming more patriarchal as democracy and education expand, Mexico is liberalizing as progressive forces successfully push laws favoring abortion and gay rights to the vexation of the Roman and evangelical churches. There is even trouble for Islam in its own realm. A third of Turks think religion is not highly important in their lives, and Iranian urban youth have been highly secularized in reaction to the inept corruption of the Mullahs. In Asia 40% of the citizens of booming South Korea don't believe in God, and only a quarter (most evangelical Christians) identify themselves as strongly religious.

Doesn't America, the one western nation where two thirds absolutely believe in God, and nine in ten think there is some form of higher power, show that religion can thrive in an advanced democracy? Not necessarily.

A decade and a half of sampling finds conservative (thought to be about two thirds to four fifths of the total of) evangelicals and born-agains consistently stuck between a quarter and a third of the population. The majority that considers religion very important in their lives dropped from over two thirds in the 1960s to a bare majority in 1970s and 1980s, and appeared to edge up in the Clinton era. But instead of rising post 9/11 as many predicted, it is slipping again.

Those who feel the opposite about religion doubled between the 1960s and 1970s, have been fairly stable since then, but have been edging up in recent years. American opinion on the issue of human evolution from animals has been rock steady, about half agreeing, about half disagreeing, for a quarter century. What has changed is how people view the Bible. In the 1970s nearly four in ten took the testaments literally, just a little over one in ten thought it was a mixture of history, fables, and legends, a three to one ratio in favor of the Biblical view. Since then a persistent trend has seen literalism decline to between a quarter and a third of the population, and skeptics have doubled to nearly one in five. If the trend continues the fableists will equal and then surpass the literalists in a couple of decades.

Even the megachurch phenomenon is illusory. A spiritual cross of sports stadiums with theme parks, hi-tech churches are a desperate effort to pull in and satisfy a mass-media jaded audience for whom the old sit in the pews and listen to the standard sermon and sing some old time hymns does not cut it anymore. Rather than boosting church membership, megachurches are merely consolidating it.

From a high of three quarters of the population in the 1930s to 1960s, a gradual, persistent decline has set in, leaving some clerics distressed at the growing abandonment of small churches as the big ones gobble up what is left of the rest. Weekly religious service attendance rose only briefly in the months after 9/11—evidence that the event failed to stem national secularization – and then lost ground as the Catholic sex scandal damaged church credibility. As few as one in four or five Americans are actually in church on a typical Sunday, only a few percent of them in megachurches.

In his Foreign Affairs article Mead noted that conservative Southern Baptists constitute the largest church in the states, and they are among the most evangelical. Mead did not note that a Southern Baptist church release laments that "evangelistically, the denomination is on a path of slow but discernable deterioration." The greatest born again sect is baptizing members at the same absolute yearly rate as they did half a century ago, when the population was half as large, and in the last few years the overall trend has been downwards.

Rather than Amerofaith becoming deeply patriarchal as Longman thinks, it is increasingly feminine. Women church goers greatly outnumber men, who find church too dull. Here's the kicker. Children tend to pick up their beliefs from their fathers. So, despite a vibrant evangelical youth cohort, young Americans taken as a whole are the least religious and most culturally tolerant age group in the nation.

One group has experienced rapid growth. In the 1940s and 50s 1-2% usually responded no asked if they believe in God, up to 98% said yes. A Harris study specifically designed to arrive at the best current figure found that 9% do not believe in a creator, and 12% are not sure. The over tenfold expansion of Amerorationalism easily outpaces the Mormon and Pentecostal growth rates over the same half century.

America's disbelievers atheists now number 30 million, most well educated and higher income, and they far outnumber American Jews, Muslims and Mormons combined. There are many more disbelievers than Southern Baptists, and the god skeptics are getting more recruits than the evangelicals.

The rise of American rationalism is based on adult choice—secularists certainly not growing via rapid reproduction. The results can be seen on the bookshelves, as aggressively atheistic books such as Sam Harris' The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell, break the mainstream publishing barrier onto the best-sellers lists. Long disparaged as neither moral or American, the growing community is beginning to assert itself as a socio-political force.

What is actually happening here and abroad is a great polarization as increasingly anxious and often desperate hard-core believers mount a vigorous counterrevolution via extreme levels of activism to the first emergence of mass apostasy in history. No major religion is expanding its share of the global population by conversion in any circumstances, much less educated democracy. Disbelief in the supernatural alone is able to achieve extraordinary rates of growth by voluntary conversion. Why?

It is to be expected that in 2nd and 3rd world nations where wealth is concentrated among an elite few and the masses are impoverished that the great majority cling to the reassurance of faith.

Nor is it all that surprising that faith has imploded in most of the west. Every single 1st world nation that is irreligious shares a set of distinctive attributes. These include handgun control, anti-corporal punishment and anti-bullying policies, rehabilitative rather than punitive incarceration, intensive sex education that emphasizes condom use, reduced socio-economic disparity via tax and welfare systems combined with comprehensive health care, increased leisure time that can be dedicated to family needs and stress reduction, and so forth.

As a result the great majority enjoy long, safe, comfortable, middle class lives that they can be confident will not be lost due to factors beyond their control. It is hard to lose one's middle class status in Europe, Canada and so forth, and modern medicine is always accessible regardless of income. Nor do these egalitarians culture emphasize the attainment of immense wealth and luxury, so most folks are reasonably satisfied with what they have got. Such circumstances dramatically reduces peoples' need to believe in supernatural forces that protect them from life's calamities, help them get what they don't have, or at least make up for them with the ultimate Club Med of heaven. One of us (Zuckerman) interviewed secular Europeans and verified that the process of secularization is casual; most hardly think about the issue of God, not finding the concept relevant to their contented lives.

The result is plain to see. Not a single advanced democracy that enjoys benign, progressive socio-economic conditions retains a high level of popular religiosity. They all go material.

It is the great anomaly, the United States, that has long perplexed sociologists. America has a large, well educated middle class that lives in comfort—so why do they still believe in a supernatural creator? Because they are afraid and insecure. Arbitrary dismissal from a long held job, loss of health insurance followed by an extended illness, excessive debt due to the struggle to live like the wealthy; before you know it a typical American family can find itself financially ruined. Overwhelming medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy.

In part to try to accumulate the wealth needed to try to prevent financial catastrophe, in part to compete in a culture of growing economic disparity with the super rich, the typical American is engaged in a Darwinian, keeping up with the Jones competition in which failure to perform to expectations further raises levels of psychological stress. It is not, therefore, surprising that most look to friendly forces from the beyond to protect them from the pitfalls of a risky American life, and if that fails compensate with a blissful eternal existence.

The effect can be more direct. For instance, the absence of universal health care encourages the utilization of faith-based medical charities. The latter, as well intentioned as they are, cannot provide the comprehensive health services that best suppress mortality at all ages. But charities extend the reach of the churches into the secular community, enhancing their ability to influence society and politics, and retain and recruit members.

Rather than religion being an integral part of the American character, the main reason the United States is the only prosperous democracy that retains a high level of religious belief and activity is because we have substandard socio-economic conditions and the highest level of disparity. The other factors widely thought to be driving forces behind mass faith—desire for the social links provided by churches, fear of societal amorality, fear of death, genetic predisposition towards religiosity, etc—are not critical simply because hundreds of millions have freely accepted being nonreligious mortals in a dozen and a half democracies. Such motives and factors can be operative only if socio-economic circumstances are sufficiently poor to sustain mass creationism and religion.

So much for the common belief that supernatural-based religiosity is the default mode inherent to the human condition. What about the hypothesis that has gained wide currency, that competition between the plethora of churches spawned by the separation of church and state is responsible for America's highly religious population? Australia and New Zealand copied the American separation between church and state in their constitutions, yet they are much more irreligious. Meanwhile the most religious advanced democracies in Europe are those where the Catholic church is, or was, dominant.

To put it starkly, the level of popular religion is not a spiritual matter, it is actually the result of social, political and especially economic conditions (please note we are discussing large scale, long term population trends, not individual cases). Mass rejection of the gods invariably blossoms in the context of the equally distributed prosperity and education found in almost all 1st world democracies. There are no exceptions on a national basis. That is why only disbelief has proven able to grow via democratic conversion in the benign environment of education and egalitarian prosperity. Mass faith prospers solely in the context of the comparatively primitive social, economic and educational disparities and poverty still characteristic of the 2nd and 3rd worlds and the US.

We can also explain why America is has become increasingly at odds with itself. On one hand the growing level of socio-economic disparity that is leaving an increasing portion of the population behind in the socially Darwinian rat-race is boosting levels of hard-line religiosity in the lower classes. On the other hand freedom from belief in the supernatural is rising among the growing segment that enjoys higher incomes and sophisticated education. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ted Turner, Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch are typical upper crust disbelievers.

The practical implications are equally breath taking. Every time a nation becomes truly advanced in terms of democratic, egalitarian education and prosperity it loses the faith. It's guaranteed. That is why perceptive theists are justifiably scared. In practical terms their only practical hope is for nations to continue to suffer from socio-economic disparity, poverty and maleducation. That strategy is, of course, neither credible nor desirable. And that is why the secular community should be more encouraged.


Skepticism of the transcendent has not swept the planet with the completeness expected by some in the 20th century. Doing so would have required the conversion to atheism of an unattainable 50 million people a year in a world where the great majority chronically lack the high level of science-oriented education, secure prosperity, and democracy that spontaneous disbelief depends upon. The expectation of global atheism was correspondingly naïve, and will remain so as billions live in, or fear living in, substandard conditions. Which should not comfort theists. Even so, theists are equally naïve when they dream that faith can retake the entire world.

Disbelief now rivals the great faiths in numbers and influence. Never before has religion faced such enormous levels of disbelief, or faced a hazard as powerful as that posed by modernity. How is organized religion going to regain the true, choice-based initiative when only one of them is growing, and it is doing so with reproductive activity rather than by convincing the masses to join in, when no major faith is proving able to grow as they break out of their ancestral lands via mass conversion, and when securely prosperous democracies appear immune to mass devotion? The religious industry simply lacks a reliable stratagem for defeating disbelief in the 21st century.

Even though liberal, pro-evolution religions are not at fault for unacceptable social policies, organized faith cannot reform itself by supporting successful secular social arrangements because these actions inadvertently suppress popular religiosity. They are caught in a classic Catch-22. And liberal churches are even less able to thrive in advanced democracies than are their more conservative counterparts, so if churches, temples and mosques become matriarchal by socio-politically liberalizing they risk secularizing themselves into further insignificance.

In Commonweal Peter Quinn contends that Stephen Gould, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris have sanitized the social philosophy of Charles Darwin, which was not sufficiently kindly and tolerant to produce "the sole and true foundation for a humanistic society, free of the primitive and dangerous irrationality of religious belief."

Aside from the above nontheists never having promoted Darwin's personal world-view as the sole fountain of societal goodness, Quinn is making the even bigger mistake—the same mistake nearly everyone is making—of believing that the contest between popular faith and secularism is an epic struggle of ideas that then determines the quality of societies. But the level and nature of popular faith is really set by economic conditions, and only secular egalitarian prosperous democracies that reject extreme social Darwinism can produce the best practical conditions.

Assuming America continues to secularize towards the 1st world norm then what can we expect? The decline in faith-based conservative ideology is predicted to allow the country to adopt the progressive policies that have been proven to work in the rest of the west, and vice-versa. Even Wal-Mart has come out in favor of universal medical coverage as bottom-line busting health care expenditures compel the corporations to turn towards the system that has done so much harm to the churches of Europe. If and when religion declines in the states Darwin's science will automatically benefit enormously as it has in ungodly Europe, but Darwinistic social policies will not fare as well as they have in Christian America.

In the end what humanity chooses to believe will be more a matter of economics than of debate, deliberately considered choice, or reproduction. The more national societies that provide financial and physical security to the population, the fewer that will be religiously devout. The more that cannot provide their citizens with these high standards the more that will hope that supernatural forces will alleviate their anxieties. It is probable that there is little that can be done by either side to alter this fundamental pattern.

Atheism is on the Rise

Interesting Findings in Cosmology

From newscientist.com:


Dark flow: Proof of another universe?

23 January 2009 by Amanda Gefter

From issue 2692 of New Scientist magazine, page 50-53


FOR most of us the universe is unimaginably vast. But not for cosmologists. They feel decidedly hemmed in. No matter how big they build their telescopes, they can only see so far before hitting a wall. Approximately 45 billion light years away lies the cosmic horizon, the ultimate barrier because light beyond it has not had time to reach us.

So here we are, stuck inside our patch of universe, wondering what lies beyond and resigned to that fact we may never know. The best we can hope for, through some combination of luck and vigilance, is to spot a crack in the structure of things, a possible window to that hidden place beyond the edge of the universe. Now Sasha Kashlinsky believes he has stumbled upon such a window.

Kashlinsky, a senior staff scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has been studying how rebellious clusters of galaxies move against the backdrop of expanding space. He and colleagues have clocked galaxy clusters racing at up to 1000 kilometres per second - far faster than our best understanding of cosmology allows. Stranger still, every cluster seems to be rushing toward a small patch of sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela.

Kashlinsky and his team claim that their observation represents the first clues to what lies beyond the cosmic horizon. Finding out could tell us how the universe looked immediately after the big bang or if our universe is one of many. Others aren't so sure. One rival interpretation is that it is nothing to do with alien universes but the result of a flaw in one of the cornerstones of cosmology, the idea that the universe should look the same in all directions. That is, if the observations withstand close scrutiny.

All the same colleagues are sitting up and taking notice. "This discovery adds to our pile of puzzles about cosmology," says Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Heaped in that pile is 95 per cent of the universe's contents, including the invisible dark matter that appears to hold the galaxies together, and the mysterious dark energy that is accelerating the universe's expansion. Accordingly, Kashlinsky named this new puzzle the "dark flow".

Kashlinsky measures how fast galaxy clusters up to 5 billion light years away are travelling by looking for signs of their motion in the cosmic microwave background, the heat left over from the big bang. Photons in the CMB generally stream uninterrupted through billions of light years of interstellar space, but when they pass through a galaxy cluster they encounter hot ionised gas in the spaces between the galaxies. Photons scattered by this gas show up as a tiny distortion in the temperature of the CMB, and if the cluster happens to be moving, the distortion will also register a Doppler shift.

In any individual cluster, this shift is far too small to detect, which is why no one had ever bothered looking for it. However, Kashlinsky realised if he combined measurements from a large enough number of clusters, the signal would be amplified to a measurable level.

Kashlinsky and his team collected a catalogue of close to 800 clusters, using telescopes that captured the X-rays emitted by the ionised gas within them. They then looked at the CMB at those locations, using images snapped by NASA's WMAP satellite. What they found shocked them. Galaxy clusters are expected to wander randomly through their particular region of space, because matter is distributed in uneven clumps, creating local gravitational fields that tug on them. Over large scales, however, matter is assumed to be spread evenly, so on these scales the clusters should coast along with space as it expands. What's more, everything in the standard model of cosmology suggests that the universe should look pretty much the same in all directions.


OUT OF BOUNDS

So what is behind the dark flow? It can't be caused by dark matter, Kashlinsky says, because all the dark matter in the universe wouldn't produce enough gravity. It can't be dark energy, either, because dark energy is spread evenly throughout space. That, leaves only one possible explanation, he concludes: something lurking beyond the cosmic horizon is to blame.

Before the findings were published in October in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (vol 686, p L49), Kashlinsky knew how heretical his idea would seem. "We sat on this for over a year checking everything," he says. "It's not what we expected or even wanted to find, so we were sceptical for a long time. But ultimately it's what's in the data."

No one knows exactly what might lurk over the horizon or indeed how large the cosmos is (see "Just how big is the universe?") But Kashlinsky suspects it is a remnant of the chaotic state that existed just a fraction of a second after the beginning of time, before a phenomenon known as inflation took hold.

It is generally thought that our universe began as a tiny patch in some pre-existing space-time forming a bubble which then underwent a burst of exponential expansion. This period of inflation stretched and smoothed our universe, leaving an even distribution of matter and energy. Outside this bubble, far beyond our cosmic horizon, things might look very different. Without inflation's ironing skills, space-time could be highly irregular: smooth in one neighbourhood and with massive structures or giant black holes in another. "It could be as bizarre as one can imagine, or something rather dull," says Kashlinsky. Either way, he suggests that something outside our bubble is tugging on our galaxy clusters, causing the dark flow.

Other, more radical, explanations for dark flow have also been floated. It is possible - even likely, some say - that ours wasn't the only bubble to inflate out of primordial space-time. In this "eternal inflation" scenario, bubbles pop up all all over the place, each defining its own universe within a larger multiverse.

Many cosmologists are happy to relegate those other universes to that dusty corner of theory where unobservable by-products are stored. Mersini-Houghton is not one of them. She argues that the dark flow is caused by other universes exerting a gravitational pull on galaxy clusters in our universe. She and her colleagues calculated how other universes, scattered at random around our bubble, would alter the gravity within it (www.arxiv.org/abs/0810.5388). "When we estimated how much force is exerted on the clusters in our universe, I was surprised that the number matched amazingly well with what Kashlinsky has observed," she says. "I firmly believe that this is the effect of something outside of our universe."

Others believe dark flow could be a sign that our bubble universe crashed into another bubble just after the big bang. In eternal inflation each bubble universe can pop into existence with its own unique set of particles and forces of nature, so collisions between bubbles can have dramatic consequences. If two universes with the same physics collide, they will generate a burst of energy, then merge. However, if two very different universes collide, a cosmic battle ensues. At the site of the crash, a wall of energy called a domain wall will form, holding the two incompatible worlds apart. The bubble with lower energy then expands, sending the domain wall sweeping through its rival, obliterating everything in its path.

If our universe underwent such a collision, any lingering evidence of the cosmic wreckage should appear in the part of the sky facing the impact site. The collision's impact should distort space, and that would in turn affect how light rays, including the CMB, travel through it and how large-scale structures, including galaxies and clusters, evolve. Looking out across the sky today, we would expect to see the universe exhibiting strange properties in the direction of the collision.

The collision might have imprinted a special direction onto the CMB, says physicist Anthony Aguirre of the University of California, Santa Cruz. "As you move away from the special direction, the temperature [of the CMB] would change." Physicists are now combing the data looking for the hallmarks of such a shift. Whenever there are weird things happening on a large scale within the galaxy, the remnants of a collision are a candidate for explaining it, Aguirre says.

A completely different take on dark flow comes from Luciano Pietronero of La Sapienza University in Rome, Italy and Francesco Sylos Labini of the Enrico Fermi Center in Rome, Italy. They say the standard cosmological model is wrong, and that a different model might explain the motion of galaxy clusters that Kashlinsky found. "This is just another element pointing toward the fact that the standard picture of galaxy formation is not correctly describing what is going on in the real universe," Pietronero says.

Predictions of the motion of galaxy clusters based on the conventional model assume matter is evenly distributed throughout space on very large scales. Pietronero and Sylos Labini claim analysis of the distributions of galaxies and galaxy clusters throughout the sky shows that this is not true, and that at large scales matter is like a fractal. If that is the case, the gravitational field throughout the universe would also be irregular and could lead to the effects Kashlinsky observed. New results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which has already mapped about a million galaxies, will help give Pietronero and Sylos Labini a more precise picture of the spread of matter, which they hope will confirm their ideas. "I think we will have interesting news very soon," says Sylos Labini.

A fractal universe would, however, raise big problems of its own. For one thing, a fractal distribution of matter is incompatible with cosmic inflation, so theorists would be left to figure out how it arose in the first place (New Scientist, 10 March 2007, p 30).


PROBING THE MULTIVERSE


Physicist Douglas Scott of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, is also sceptical that dark flow is evidence of anything outside our observable universe. "There is no reason at all to expect it to come from structures beyond the horizon," he says. Scott notes that so far dark flow has only been observed out to distances that are only a few per cent of the total distance to the horizon. "If the effect is real," he says, "then the likely explanation would be some very large-scale structure, but still within the horizon." Such a structure, though, would still present a major challenge to cosmology's standard model.

The most important thing now is to confirm that dark flow is real and that it continues all the way out to the cosmic horizon. Two other teams have made measurements consistent with Kashlinsky's results, but only on scales less than 200 million light years - just a short step compared to the distance out to the horizon.

To confirm their finding, Kashlinsky's team will be analysing more recent WMAP data and working with researchers at the University of Hawaii on data from an all-sky X-ray catalogue. The tiny Doppler effect that Kashlinsky uses to measure the clusters' velocities is only observable in bulk, which means the more galaxy clusters he can look at the better. "If confirmed, this will be an exciting way of probing the ultimate structure of the universe and perhaps even the multiverse," Kashlinsky says. "But you have to check and recheck."

"If this thing is confirmed and it is real, it will be incredibly important," says Aguirre, "on the same order of discovery as the realisation that those little smudges on the sky are other galaxies. The most important thing it would tell us is that the standard picture is broken in some way. And the most exciting thing it could tell us is that there are other universes." If it does, space and time will open up to reveal a reality that is so much bigger than we know. When that happens, those claustrophobia-stricken cosmologists will finally be able to breathe easy.


JUST HOW BIG IS THE UNIVERSE?


It is 13.7 billion years since the big bang, so light now reaching us cannot have started its journey longer ago than that. Yet the most distant object we could conceivably see today lies further away than 13.7 billion light years. That's because throughout the life of the universe, space has been expanding. Taking this into account, cosmologists calculate that the edge of our observable universe is now approximately 45 billion light years away.

Beyond that, who knows? The inflation theory of cosmology predicts that the universe grew from a bubble. Just how big that bubble has now become depends on how long inflation lasted. If it continued for a very long time - in this context "very long" is still only a fraction of a second - then the edge of our universe might lie far beyond the 45-billion-light-year limit of our vision. That could also rule out the possibility of observing the influence of other universes on our own. As physicist Matthew Kleban of New York University puts it: "It's totally possible that we live in a multiverse and we'll never know because there's been so much inflation."

Amanda Gefter is an editor at New Scientist

Interesting Findings in Cosmology

More Attacks Upon Atheism...

I recently came across this story from December of '08 about Jesse Kilgore, a christian who killed himself, after allegedly reading Richard Dawkins' book The god Delusion, because he felt there was no longer any meaning to his life.

Here is the story from World Net Daily (a conservative news source, ie. sticks up their asses, delusional idiots):

Dad links son's suicide to 'The God Delusion'
Says atheism-promoting book hidden under mattress, last page bookmarked

Posted: November 20, 2008
11:10 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh


A New York man is linking the suicide of his 22-year-old son, a military veteran who had bright prospects in college, to the anti-Christian book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins after a college professor challenged the son to read it.

"Three people told us he had taken a biology class and was doing well in it, but other students and the professor were really challenging my son, his faith. They didn't like him as a Republican, as a Christian, and as a conservative who believed in intelligent design," the grief-stricken father, Keith Kilgore, told WND about his son, Jesse.

"This professor either assigned him to read or challenged him to read a book, 'The God Delusion,' by Richard Dawkins," he said.

Jesse Kilgore committed suicide in October by walking into the woods near his New York home and shooting himself. Keith Kilgore said he was shocked because he believed his son was grounded in Christianity, had blogged against abortion and for family values, and boasted he'd been debating for years.

After Jesse's death, Keith Kilgore learned of the book assignment from two of his son's friends and a relative. He searched Jesse's room and found the book under the mattress with his son's bookmark on the last page.

A WND message seeking a comment from Dawkins or his publisher was not returned today.

The first inkling of a reason for the suicide came, Keith Kilgore told WND, when one of Jesse's friends came to visit after word of his son's death circulated.

"She was in tears [and said] he was very upset by this book," Keith Kilgore said. "'It just destroyed him,' were her words.

"Then another friend at the funeral told me the same thing," Keith Kilgore said. "This guy was his best friend, and about the only other Christian on campus.

"The third one was the last person that my son talked to an hour before [he died,]" Keith Kilgore told WND, referring to a member of his extended family whose name is not being revealed here.

That relative, who had struggled with his own faith and had returned to Christianity, wrote in a later e-mail that Jesse "started to tell me about his loss of faith in everything."

"He was pretty much an atheist, with no belief in the existence of God (in any form) or an afterlife or even in the concept of right or wrong," the relative wrote. "I remember him telling me that he thought that murder wasn't wrong per se, but he would never do it because of the social consequences - that was all there was - just social consequences."

"He mentioned the book he had been reading 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins and how it along with the science classes he had take[n] had eroded his faith. Jesse was always great about defending his beliefs, but somehow, the professors and the book had presented him information that he found to be irrefutable. He had not talked … about it because he was afraid of how you might react. ... and that he knew most of your defenses of Christianity because he himself used them often. Maybe he had used them against his professors and had the ideas shot down."

He then explained to Jesse his own personal journey of seeking "other explanations of God's existence" and told of his ultimate return.

"I told him it was my relationship with God, not my knowledge of Him that brought me back to my faith. No one convinced me with facts. ... it was a matter of the heart."

Keith Kilgore believes it was a biology class that raised questions for his son, and a biology professor at Jefferson Community College in Watertown, N.Y., where his son was attending, who suggested the book.

A school spokeswoman told WND that the "God Delusion" was not a part of the biology curriculum, and several of the professors she contacted said they had not even read the book. However, the spokeswoman was unable to contact all of the professors in the department and could not state that none of them had suggested the book to Jesse.

Local police also did not respond to WND inquiries about the investigation into the death.

"One of his friends, and his uncle (they did not know each other) both told me that Jesse called them hours before he took his life and that he had lost all hope because he was convinced that God did not exist, and this book was the cause," Keith Kilgore told WND.

Keith Kilgore, a retired military chaplain who has dealt with the various stages of grief and readily admits he's still in the "anger" stage over his son's death, said his son apparently had checked the "Delusion" out of the college library.

"I'm all for academic freedom," Keith Kilgore said. "What I do have a problem with is if there's going to be academic freedom, there has to be academic balance.

"They were undermining every moral and spiritual value for my [son]," he said. "They ought to be held accountable."

He suggested the moral is for Christians simply to abandon public schools wholly.

"Here's another thing," he continued. "If my son was a professing homosexual, and a professor challenged him to read [a book called] 'Preventing Homosexuality'… If my son was gay and [the book] made him feel bad, hopeless, and he killed himself, and that came out in the press, there would be an outcry.

"He would have been a victim of a hate crime and the professor would have been forced to undergo sensitivity training, and there may have even been a wrongful death lawsuit.

"But because he's a Christian, I don't even get a return telephone call," the father told WND.

He said he tried to verify the book assignment himself several times, without getting a response from the school.

Jesse Kilgore blogged on NetPotion and Newblog, and the writings that remained mostly addressed social ills and how anti-Christian many of the world's developments appeared to be.

He used the pen name JKrapture because, his father said, "He believed in the rapture, the evangelical concept of the Lord coming back."

On the Web, Jesse described himself as "conservative and mainly independent. I am a culture warrior and traditionalist. I have been debating since I was in 5th Grade, and never looked back. It is a habit I can't let go of."

One of Jesse's uncles, writing on the same website as Jesse, wrote: "While I knew he was having struggles with his faith, I had no idea that it ran that deep. … There are not enough words to describe how devastated I am at his loss. I know that some of you got to know him pretty well and (since I already started getting some questions about him) felt that you all should know that he is no longer with us."

From among the online community came these responses: "I am shocked and so sorry for your loss – our loss. My prayers are with you and all of your family at this difficult time," and "I AM at a loss of words.....I am sooooo sorry to hear your loss. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family."

Keith Kilgore told WND he feels, by allowing his son to move into the atmosphere of a secular school, like "I put a toddler in the front of my car."

"My son is the Adam Walsh of the culture war. That's who my son is," he said, referring to the child abduction victim whose case was used to create a wide range of amber alert and other programs to protect children.

He said he has a wake-up call over the anti-Christian agenda of public education. And he has some goals.

"I want to hold schools accountable for what they're teaching our kids. This was malpractice," he said.

Dawkins, considered one of the world's most outspoken atheists, is a professor in the United Kingdom. He came to prominence in 1976 with his book "The Selfish Gene," promoting evolution.

In his "Delusion" treatise he claims that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a "delusion" – a fixed false belief.

_______________________________________________________________


First I'd like to say that this young man's death is sad, but ultimately it was his fault, not any book, and not any individual. The reason I take this position is because no one told the kid to kill himself, and Dawkins' book does not promote a world without meaning. That's just what Jesse decided to take from it because his distorted view of the world demanded that there be some ultimate purpose; a heaven and a god to make everything matter. It was his own views that killed him because he obviously couldn't handle the truth.

I also think it's odd that Jessie would make such a statement as to say that murder wasn't wrong:

"I remember him telling me that he thought that murder wasn't wrong per se, but he would never do it because of the social consequences - that was all there was - just social consequences."

Just social consequences? Like being dead? I wouldn't call that a simple 'social consequence.' A 'social consequence' is when your family and friends are upset with you over an immoral act you committed, like stealing for example. More often than not you get your life taken from you for the crime of murder. Hardly a 'social consequence.'

It seems to me that this kid was sadly very confused and lost but it's unfortunate when stupid theists have to take this story and claim that atheism is the cause of immorality and purposelessness. This is clearly not true when you look at many of the most irreligious countries. Most people interviewed by sociologist Phil Zuckerman, who did not believe in a personal god, told him that they themselves were the source of the meaning to their lives, and chose what their meaning was.

I'm sure someone might try to counter this statement with the fact that most of these counties have higher rates of suicide than do more religious countries and I'm not going to try to argue against that. But when you have to go out yourself and find meaning in your life it can be much harder compared to just having it handed to you, as with religion.

The problem isn't the religion, or lack thereof, it's that person's mental state (though religion can distort a person's view of reality) and what they have in their lives. Whatever a person has in their life, that's their purpose; that's their meaning. If you have your religion, that gives you a purpose; a false and distorted one, but a purpose nonetheless. What about people who have no religion? Well, someone who has children, that is oftentimes their purpose: to take care of them, nurture them, etc. A person can be married and help support his wife and enjoy your time with that person because it won't last forever.

Your life is what you make it, and I don't want to make snap judgments about this kid, but maybe he didn't care about his friends and family enough (let alone his own life) to feel that his life was worth living? If he actually felt that life was pointless without god, then I'd say his views were unhealthy. Didn't he care about his friends, his family? Why didn't he seem to feel as if that was enough purpose and meaning in life?

I found this story on other anti-atheism/theist blogs and as always they're trying to discredit atheism and distort it, claiming that it leads to immorality and a purposeless life. Not true.

If this young man's story is a blow against atheism, then I guess I am a blow against theism, because despite believing in god I was suicidal during my teen years. Once I realized that praying for god to take the pain away wasn't going to help I began to rely on myself and guess what? I cured my own depression and it lead me to the reality based views that I hold today.

For anyone who feels that I'm not truly serious about this view, and am only attempting to save atheism's reputation, that's not true. I feel the same regarding a fairly recent story about Megan Meier, a girl who killed herself because a daughter and mother were taunting and teasing her on the social networking website called MySpace. The mother and daughter should not be held responsible for Megan's death. Megan hung herself because of her fragile mental state.

When I was being bullied in school and suffered my depression and contemplated suicide countless times, that wasn't the bullies' fault. It was my fault. It was my reaction to what was happening in my life. True, the acts of my bullies, and the acts of the parent and daughter on MySpace, and the reading of Dawkins' book inspired thoughts of despair, but ultimately it was Megan's and Jesse's reactions to their situations that lead to their deaths.

This isn't to say these individuals didn't play a role in these situations, but as I said, it was ultimately mine, Megan's and Jesse's reaction to what was happening to us that caused those outcomes.

More Attacks Upon Atheism...

Speed Cameras: Are They Really Reducing Accidents? Or is it a Lie by the Government to Steal Our Money?

According to a recent article I came across it is a lie.

Here is the piece reproduced for my readers:


Swindon votes to scrap speed cameras

Road safety campaigners pledged to monitor Swindon closely when it becomes the first town in the UK to scrap fixed-point speed cameras.

Road safety campaigners pledged to monitor Swindon closely when it becomes the first town in the UK to scrap fixed-point speed cameras.

The nine-strong cabinet of Tory-run Swindon Borough Council voted unanimously in favour of withdrawing from the Wiltshire and Swindon Safety Camera Partnership.

The idea was first suggested a year ago by Peter Greenhalgh, councillor for highways in Swindon, who objected to central Government receiving the cash from fines while Swindon Council had to pay £320,000-a-year for the cameras' upkeep.

He has in the past branded speed cameras a "blatant tax on motorists".

His stance on the issue saw him hailed as a hero on BBC motoring programme Top Gear earlier this year.

Speaking after the vote, Mr Greenhalgh said: "I understand we are the first council in Britain to get rid of fixed-point speed cameras."

He said 70 people in 2007/08 had been killed on the streets of Swindon - proof speed cameras were not making roads safer and the reason why council cash should be spent on other safety measures. [Emphasis mine]

New road safety measures being considered by the council include education and training for motorists, better street lighting and reduced speed limits in problem areas. Despite the end of speed traps in the town, police will continue to use mobile speed-measuring devices.

Mr Greenhalgh added: "We will be working very closely with our partners, including police in the road safety partnership to deliver a plan that reduced the number of people being killed on the roads in Swindon."

There are currently eight fixed-point cameras in Swindon - six speed cameras and two red light cameras, police said.





Another study reported that the UK government was lying in 2006 about the accident and injury rates. It was claimed that the speed cameras helped to decrease accidents, but research showed this wasn't the case. It was found that injury rates actually remained consistent despite the cameras.

Here is the article:

Speed camera safety record in doubt as watchdog questions statistics
by RAY MASSEY
Last updated at 22:00 24 September 2006

Speed camera policy was drawn into a new controversy after the Government's own statisticians cast doubt on the accuracy of official casualty figures.

Statistics watchdogs warned that the decade of greatest speed-camera growth had not seen a massive reduction in deaths and injuries. Instead it had remained largely static and was now going up.

Figures from hospitals suggest the true rate of death and serious injury could be half as many again as the number claimed by the Government which prefers to use lower figures provided by the police.

But some studies go even further and suggest the true scale of the carnage could be double the level made public by the Government - undermining the road-safety justification for cameras and humps.

The discrepancies led to angry claims last night (Sun) that ministers were seeking to 'sex up' their statistics with 'dodgy' figures in a bid to justify their controversial 'cash for cameras' policy.

The row came as campaigners urged a new crackdown on young 'rogue' drivers - seen by many as the real lethal menace on British roads - by extending the age at which a learner may gain a full licence to 18.

Speed cameras can't catch these 'rogues' but police patrols which could stop them have been axed, they note.

Support for a minimum one year probationary period and tougher sentencing has been spearheaded by bereaved mother Elizabeth Davidson - whose 26 year old doctor daughter Margaret was killed by a speeding teenager.

The shocking new evidence comes as ministers are set this Thursday to announce another 'fall' in the number of people killed and seriously injured to around 32,200 - down from 34,000 in 2004 and 47,000 decade ago.

They will again claim that the proliferation of speed cameras - fining drivers £60 a time and adding three points on their licence - has played a central role in this alleged reduction.

But critics and now Government statisticians say the figures are 'flawed' because police are 'under-reporting' the figures. So instead of ministers hitting targets on casualty reduction, the Government will miss them by a country mile.

Police 'rely too much on raising cash'

Motoring groups say police relied too much on cash-raising speed cameras which are unable to spot a dangerous, drunk, uninsured, or untaxed driver in an unroadworthy or stolen vehicle who is driving under the speed limit.

Last year 6,000 speed cameras caught more than 2 million motorists, raising £120m a year for so-called 'Safety Camera Partnerships' comprising police, magistrates councils and road safety groups.

At the same time there has been an 11 per cent cut in police patrols.

Doubts over the Government's shaky accident figures were raised by the watchdog Statistics Commission. A briefing note voiced 'particular concern' that the Government is using the lesser police statistics to measure whether it is meeting its target for a 40 per cent reduction by 2010 in the numbers killed and seriously injured in road accidents.

The Office of National Statistics said that the National Statistician Karen Dunhill had 'expressed her concern' over the issue.

Latest police figures suggest that about 59.4 people per 100,000 are killed or seriously injured - down from 85.9 per 100,000 a decade ago.

But figures based on hospital admissions have remained broadly constant over the period at about 90 per 100,000 are killed or seriously injured.

A study by Oxford University researchers - published in the British Medical Journal - said hospital admission rates from traffic injuries had remained virtually unchanged between 1996 and 2004, but had risen slightly in 2004 from 90 per 100,000 to 91.1 per 100,000.

A separate study by University College London and Swansea University called 'Under-reporting of Road Casualties' said the number seriously injured could be double the number recorded in police statistics, blaming 'misclassifying or misrecording' of injuries.

Paul Smith of road safety group Safe Speed said:'So now we see the truth. The roads are not getting safer. Government road safety policy is being sexed-up by dodgy statistics.

'The Department for Transport must immediately pull the plug on the failed and dangerous speed camera programme.'




There you have it, and there are several groups trying to ban photo radar here in the U.S. as well because it's been noted that they can cause a safety hazard when a group of cars slams on their breaks to avoid a speed camera and the cars behind them smash into them.

This whole business of speed cameras is a huge scam anyway because according to several studies I found, speed doesn't have as much of an effect on accidents as do other factors, such as failing to look properly, which was the largest reason for accidents. As I've said many times, speed limits are nothing more than one more law to enable the state to steal our money.

Another fact is that there have been some studies which seem to support the fact that speed cameras can cause more rear end collisions.

Here is a chart from the above study:



The BBC also did a news report about these speed cameras and have footage of a few vehicles slamming on their brakes as they see the cameras and they end up losing control of their vehicle.





With these several problems occurring due to speed cameras many places are shutting them down. Several examples are Hawaii, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Michigan, Ohio, Alaska, Nebraska, and New Jersey.

I think governments around the world ought to follow Europe's lead and discontinue the use of cameras (though they are still using the mobile speed cam units, but even these they should do away with) for everyone's safety. But, as I've argued elsewhere, it's just like the government to instate a law at the expense of its citizens' safety as long as they rake in that cash.

So, after looking at this data, do you still think speed cameras make you safer or is it all a lie by the government to steal our money? The answer should be obvious....

Speed Cameras: Are They Really Reducing Accidents? Or is it a Lie by the Government to Steal Our Money?

"Nannyism" Running Rampant

Nannyism - "Policies such as mandatory helmet laws and bans on smoking in public places, high taxes on junk food, recreational drug use, gun control, a legal drinking age or legal smoking age that is higher than the age of majority, censorship, seat belt legislation, and content regulation are criticized as nanny state actions. Such actions result from the belief that the state (or, more often, one of its local authorities) has a comprehensive duty to protect the citizenry from their own harmful behaviors, and assumes that the state knows best what constitutes harmful behavior."



There are many people - including those within government - who wish to ban anything they see as potentially harmful to citizens. This includes banning the game of tag because it "encourages fights." The same goes for any kind of "chasing games" - even touch football (Source: Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America into a Nation of Children, by David Harsanyi, pages 152-153) in many elementary schools.

Attempted bans on smoking, the drinking of alcohol - even things that a "normal" [yes, I'm saying these people are not 'normal'] person would think is insane to ban. The book Nanny State claims that the state of New York has even enacted bans on riding a bicycle without having your feet on the peddles, putting a plastic frame around your license plate, smoking in a bar, feeding pigeons, and even placing a bag next to you on a subway seat (Source: Nanny State, page 6).

I agree with the author, David Harsanyi, who continuously says how this country was set up as free and all this policing is needless and violates our freedoms and even privacy in some instances. It shouldn't matter what we do as long as one does no harm to another (I think this is the author's basic stance - though he does make it clear he feels some things should be banned for safety). When talking about the ban on smoking in many places around the country (page 110) Harsanyi says, "Who exactly asked for anyone's help? And what responsibility, if any, does government have to impel people to be healthy?....Sure, millions of people choose [emphasis in original] to smoke. They may be killing themselves. And as a public-policy matter, it's none of my business. Those are the risks, rewards, and choices associated with being free. With self-determination, we have to be prepared to accept that some people will make choices that fly in the face of reason" [emphasis mine].

This has been my entire point with the idea of anarchism - this is what anarchism entails! While I agree with the author and anyone else who advocates freedom, I don't agree with the fact that they sanction government intervention at least at some minimal level, while the anarchist feels that no government is needed whatsoever, and any infringement upon the human beings' natural rights should be abolished, including any and all taxation.

Again, as with another post I did about the hypocrisy of many atheists, some people make statements that - taken to their logical conclusion - would favor the concept of anarchism. That of allowing people to have true freedom to do what they want as long as they don't infringe upon other peoples' freedoms and rights.

This book, Nanny State, is truly a good book and I agree with 99.9% of everything the author has to say. I just don't agree that we need any form of government whatsoever. As I've argued elsewhere, power often corrupts individuals so to allow anyone to have power over you would be a bad decision.




"...a grant of liberties, no mater how extensive, is not full recognition of the fact of individual liberty."

- Rose Wilder Lane

"Nannyism" Running Rampant

Voting Conspiracy on Amazon.com?

I was surfing the web for reviews of David Aikman's newer book called The Delusion of Disbelief and came upon this forum where it seems that some christians were conspiring to flood negative reviews with "unhelpful" votes.

I had posted my review of it a few months after all this was posted and I wonder if the large number of "unhelpful" votes for my review have been due to christians disliking the way in which I dismantled Aikman's arguments? I would consider my review to be helpful and it explains Aikman's overall premise of his book, so I don't see why anyone would consider it unhelpful.

As of January 4, 2009 here is the number of "helpful" and "unhelpful" votes I've gotten. Out of 21 total votes I've only received 10 "helpful." It's neck and neck, but I don't doubt the several negative votes are because of silly biased and ignorant christians.




Here is the forum where christians are speaking of voting against many of the negative reviews.




I have no proof that this group has voted against my and many other negative reviews of Aikman's book, but it seems to me to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Here is another act of hypocrisy by christians who claim to be so honest and ethical.

I think christians are upset that the onslaught of books attempting to refute the "new atheists" have done an extremely poor job and this is their silly way of venting their frustrations about their heros being unable to put much more than a dent in many of the atheist writers' books (many apologists do point out minor errors, but none that I've read have come anywhere close to refuting any main arguments used in the atheists' books).

So, to fight back against the silly christians voting against my review I kindly ask anyone who thinks my review is useful to counteract their unethical actions by voting yes, that my review has been helpful in making a decision about the book. Please click here to vote.

Thanks.

Ya know, on second thought, this has been the case with my amazon.com review of David Marshall's book also. I'd appreciate it if everyone (if you find the review helpful and informative) to vote that it was "helpful" to counter the immaturity of David Marshall and other silly christians. I know that Marshall is one of the people who voted my review "unhelpful." At the same time he responded to my review in the comments section I all of a sudden got an "unhelpful" vote. Coincidence? I doubt it.

The amazon review can currently be found here.

Once again, thanks!

Voting Conspiracy on Amazon.com?

The Evolution of Arizona Atheist

I was a little bored one evening (as you can probably tell) so I cooked this up:

This has been the first time I've ever written for this long and this extensively on any subject so I'm quite proud of my blog. Aside from the fairly recent changes in subject matter, my blog has also gone through some changes visually. I was looking at the past versions of it and this most recent layout is my favorite, but I did like the original black layout (though it looks like blogspot doesn't offer this layout anymore), though I changed it because of the many very long posts I've written (some of the book reviews for example) and felt that readers' eyes may hurt if reading the white on black layout (because it hurt mine) so I decided to change it in hopes of increasing the likability of my blog. No one is going to read if the site hurts their eyes!

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get an actual screenshot of the very first black layout. I had to go to the website Frank Walton Chronicle, which took a picture of a piece of my blog, detailing one of the idiotic things that "Frank Walton" said to me.


September, 2007:







November, 2007:






December, 2007:






October, 2008 - Present




I thought I'd close out this post with explaining the reasoning behind the layout. I chose the famous picture of "The Thinker" because I ponder many things: life, religion, philosophy, etc. I chose that particular quote of Noam Chomsky's (under "The Thinker" picture) because I felt it best described the purpose of this blog: to expose lies. I looked at probably twenty different quotes and I felt that one best summed up my goals, though it was a tough choice. I don't remember any of the other quotes that were runners up.

I already described the significance of the "A" anarchist symbol here.

The Evolution of Arizona Atheist

The Lucifer Effect - January 2009

Happy New Year!!!

I wonder how many innocent people the cops will either murder, beat, or harass this year?

Since this is supposed to be a happy time with a new year and all I think I'll post something that's funny.

I give you Bill Maher!




On second thought, since this is supposed to be about the awful things pigs do to innocent people I'll post this too.

The Lucifer Effect - January 2009